Forget Iran, forget North Korea, forget the emerging Chinese superpower and forget the resurgent nationalism of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Even before Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Pakistan was the country that arguably posed the greatest challenge to the West’s security. Now it is an even greater challenge.
Pakistan is the first Muslim country to have acquired nuclear weapons. Her nuclear arsenal was developed in the 1970s by Benazir’s father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, to protect the country from the possibility of attack by India. Whether Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is maintained purely for self-defence could now become a moot point, particularly if the Islamists make a strong showing in the forthcoming Pakistani elections — assuming that President Pervaiz Musharraf holds true to his pledge to return his troubled nation to democracy.
Washington, which bankrolls Mr Musharraf to the tune of billions of dollars in return for his support in tackling Islamic extremists, believes that there are enough security safeguards to prevent Pakistan’s nukes falling into the wrong hands. But other security experts are not so sure. M.J. Gohel, who heads the highly respected Asia-Pacific Foundation, the London-based security and intelligence think-tank, has warned that there is a strong possibility that parts of Pakistan’s nuclear technology could fall into the hands of Islamic militants. ‘It is a very, very valid risk. It’s only a matter of time before al-Qa’eda or somebody sympathetic to them gets hold of nuclear weapons,’ he warns.
Nor is it just Pakistan’s home-grown extremists who hanker after Pakistan’s nuclear treasure trove. Thanks to the entrepreneurial skills of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, the ‘father’ of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, Iran, North Korea and Libya have all acquired the technological know-how to develop an atom bomb; Dr Khan kindly sold them the blueprints.
Libya, courtesy of some sterling work by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, has publicly disowned its nuclear ambitions after Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the country’s eccentric leader, was persuaded that he might suffer a similar fate to that of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein if he persisted with developing weapons of mass destruction. But how great a part Dr Kahn played in the development of North Korea’s atom bomb, which was test-fired in late 2006, and in Iran’s nuclear programme is not known. One of the major issues that still remains unresolved between Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency is precisely what progress the Iranians have made with the Pakistani blueprint.
If Pakistan’s profligacy with its nuclear know-how remains a cause for serious concern, however, so does the country’s ability to remain a pivotal ally in the West’s campaign to rid the world of the pernicious threat of Islamic terrorism. Pakistan’s geographical location at the epicentre of the West’s attempts to subjugate the Taleban and destroy al-Qa’eda’s terrorist infrastructure speaks for itself. To the west there is the mountainous border with Iran, through which many al-Qa’eda fighters are believed to have travelled on their return to Pakistan’s lawless north-west frontier following their expulsion from Afghanistan by coalition forces in 2001. Further north there is the notoriously porous 1,500-mile Durand line that separates Pakistan from Afghanistan, and across which Taleban militants cross at will to confront Nato forces.
By far the most troublesome part of Pakistan’s remote frontiers, however, are the lawless tribal territories in the north-west that have become al-Qa’eda’s main operational base. Since the 11 September attacks, the overwhelming majority of Islamist terror plots conceived against Western targets can be traced back to the inhospitable mountain ranges that surround the provincial capital, Quetta. In Britain’s case, this means both the successful attacks — such as the bombing of London’s transport system on 7 July 2005 — and the thwarted terror plots, such as the one uncovered by Operation Crevice. This last plot involved a group of Pakistani-trained terrorists who were planning to carry out a series of attacks against densely populated targets such as the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent.
But however chaotic circumstances are, and however porous Pakistan’s borders, Islamabad’s active support for the Coalition cause is deemed essential if the war against terrorism is to stand any chance of success. That is why Britain and America were so desperate to sign up Mr Musharraf as an ally after 9/11. At first the Pakistani dictator appeared reluctant to commit himself, but he was encouraged to do so by President George W. Bush’s threat to bomb Pakistan back to the dark ages if he did not.
No organisation understands better the elemental threat posed by the region’s numerous Islamic militant groups than Pakistan’s military establishment, not least because it was instrumental in creating many of them in the first place. Whether it was supporting mujahedin groups fighting the Russian’s following Moscow’s ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, or Islamic militants trying to ‘liberate’ Kashmir from Indian rule, the Pakistani military — and in particular its intelligence wing, the ISI — has been deeply involved in training, supplying and even directing the activities of many of these groups. Not for nothing does the dark shadow of the Pakistani military hang over Miss Bhutto’s murder.
The military’s support for Muslim extremists has continued in spite of Mr Musharraf’s alliance with Washington. Initially Mr Musharraf was prepared to curb the activities of the more extreme militants, not least because they posed as much of a threat to Pakistan’s survival — as evidenced by Miss Bhutto’s murder — as they did to Western interests. But both Mr Musharraf and the military establishment lost much of their enthusiasm for pursuing al-Qa’eda and its affiliates when it became clear that the Bush administration was more obsessed with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq than it was with the architects of the 11 September attacks.
Mr Musharraf’s failure to make tangible progress against al-Qa’eda and the Taleban is one of the reasons that Washington appears to have lost faith in him and was pressing Miss Bhutto’s case as a viable alternative. But in the rush to return Pakistan to democratic rule, Miss Bhutto’s American and British backers seem to have forgotten just how difficult it is to govern a country that has never really come to terms with the widely differing communities and conflicting interests that were forced into an uneasy cohabitation when Pakistan first came into being 60 years ago.
For all his faults — such as his blatant disregard for democracy, human rights and the judiciary — Mr Musharraf has managed to hold the country together during the most challenging period of its short history; and it is now hard to think of anyone better qualified than Mr Musharraf to prevent Pakistan falling over the precipice of self-destruction.